Publisher/Date:
Le Franc Tireur (2021)
Product Type:
HASL/Historical Module
Country of Origin:
France
Contents:
2 24" x 33" historical maps on matte paper, 16 scenarios on glossy color cardstock, 3 campaign games, 2 die-cut countersheets (480 1/2" counters & 48 5/8" counters, for a total of 528 counters), 36-page bound rulebook, 24 pages of charts/tables/CG info, 80-page bound historical background booklet.
Someone encountering the title of Le Franc Tireur’s latest historical module, The Green Hell of Inor, could easily assume the module was set somewhere in the dense jungles of New Guinea, but designers Xavier Vitry and Lionel Colin had a very different destination in mind: the tiny French village of Inor, located near the Belgian border and the Ardennes. Inor essentially formed part of the French shoulder south of the May 1940 German breakthrough in the Ardennes, and as such was the scene of fierce fighting, as the Germans sought to widen their breakthrough and the French to prevent any such expansion. In fact, fighting raged back and forth across this area throughout the second half of May, providing an opportunity to depict sustained fighting far from a major urban center like Stalingrad or Budapest or Manila. Much of the fighting took place in the thick woods north and east of Inor, providing the “green hell” of the module (the module’s name was actually taken from a German wartime propaganda publication about the battle).
Inor and Vicinity
Inor is an expensive product–going for around $122 as of this writing–but players get something for their money, as Inor is also big, with high-quality components and a lot of play value. For some reason, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about Inor since its 2021 release, which is a shame, as the historical module has a lot to offer ASLers, including some of the most sustained high-intensity woods-fighting to be found in ASL. There are other ASL historical modules with large woods or jungle areas, but more often than not little fighting actually takes place in the woods areas of the map. With Inor, in contrast, much of the fighting does take place in the woods, giving ASLers a fairly original playing experience.
The centerpiece of Inor is its historical map, and it’s a massive one, comprised of two 24″ x 33″ historical mapsheets that form a large rectangular area–in fact, one that may be a bit too large for some gaming tables. Printed on sturdy matte paper, the mapsheets depict the village of Inor, located on the lower left corner of the map, next to a canal (the Meuse is just off-map to the west). There is farmland and open ground as one leaves to the town to the north or the east, with the terrain also gradually rising in both directions. Part of the northern half of the map area, and most of the eastern half, is dominated by thick woods that restrict mobility and vision but will nevertheless have to be fought through. It should be noted that the hexes are not the large 1″ or larger hexes of Red Barricades or Hatten in Flames, but rather are only .75″ wide, making them slightly smaller than geoboard hexes (.8″). This can cause problematically high counter congestion in some areas, though the wide-ranging nature of the conflict across a large map area will likely reduce the areas of uncomfortable counter crush.
Overall, the map is attractively rendered, with clear and crisp graphics. There are only a few map issues. The biggest problem is that there are a lot of woods-path hexes in which the paths are virtually invisible. It is really easy to miss some of these paths–which is pretty important given the amount of fighting that takes place in the woods. They should have been rendered in a much more obvious way; players will really have to pay attention to the paths. There are also level 6 hill hexes with black hex numbers that are difficult to read. All the darkest hill hexes should have had white hex numbers, rather than just the woods hexes. Given the number of different levels on the map, it also would have been nice for level numbers to be printed on the map itself, as they are on many historical maps.
Inor also comes with two countersheets. These are primarily French infantry counters (and leaders/SW) with historical insignia for different units that fought during the battle. This is not just cosmetic, as some of the units (notably French Foreign Legion and North African units) have some special qualities, depending on the formation. “Assault Engineer” squads are also provided for them. There are also some new 5-3-7 and 4-5-8 squads that represent the Groupes Francs that most French battalions had: squads of volunteers equipped with more and better weapons and used for special assignments. Other counters include around 20 French AFVs, some German and French aircraft, some old German machineguns, and a few odds and ends (including two American flamethrowing tanks that are obviously not used in this product, but the purpose of which is unclear).
Generally, the artwork and die-cutting is good, although the vehicle IDs on the AFVs are so small that many people will only be able to read them with a magnifying glass. The French counters do have the problem common to all French counters in ASL, which is that the black on dark blue color scheme is not optimal. Some day, an enterprising third-party publisher will try printing French counters with a white-on-dark-blue color scheme and players will rejoice.
Unfortunately, there are issues with some of the counters. First, a certain but supposedly small number of purchasers received copies of Inor that came with poorly printed and die-cut counters. To rectify this, Le Franc Tireur included a replacement countersheet in From the Cellar Pack #11. Players who got bad counters–and hopefully there aren’t many of them–should seek out that product. However, even for the bulk of ASLers who received normal countersheets, there are some mistakes on the counters, most notably some half-squad counters with incorrect broken-side morale factors. There are also two 5/8″ counters that had each other’s back sides. Not all of these issues are fully explained on LFT’s errata for this product, which doesn’t seem to contain the most recent Inor errata. Errata posted on the French ASL forums in February 2022 seems to be more current, and explains all the counter problems; all purchasers should look at the errata there. While it is frustrating to get a product with any counter errors, these are relatively minor and are not difficult to deal with.
Inor comes a 36-page staple-bound rulebook, laid out in the typical Le Franc Tireur style. A 36-page rulebook may sound intimidating, but players should keep in mind that LFT rulebooks are typeset using a much larger font and more generously-spaced style, including illustrations. The rules would have been much smaller if rendered like official ASL rules pages. Not surprisingly, most of the rules are dedicated to the campaign games, but there are also a relatively small number of terrain rules, as well as rules for certain French formations. The 11th French Foreign Legion regiment, for example, does not have a reduced-side morale (in contrast to normal French units) and may freely use captured German SW. Elite FFL squads do not cower. Their HOB and leader creation drm are also better. The Algerian regiments, meanwhile, have elite squads that are stealthy when in woods/brush/orchard hexes, and may initiate hand-to-hand combat. They also have a higher broken-side morale.
The rules include 3 different campaign games. CGI (“The Pride of the Foreign Legion”) has 3 campaign dates, each taking place over 3 days from May 21-30th (the dates are so long because combat was only intermittent during this period, with down times between fights). CGII (“Sauerei Wald”) has five campaign dates, each a day long, from May 15 to May 19. CGIII (“Flanking the Maginot Line”), the longest, has 8 campaign dates from May 15 to May 27 (with 6 dates representing one day each, and two dates representing 3 days each). Two of the campaign games use the entire map area, while the smallest one uses all of one map and part of another. It would have been nice to have had at least one campaign game only using a single map, for those ASLers with more modestly-sized gaming tables, but they may be able to make do by folding the partial map over for CGI.
The campaign games allow for attacks and counterattacks, so the French will not always be on the defensive. Both sides also get a reasonable number of purchase options in the campaign games, although Inor was an infantry fight, so players should not expect much in the way of vehicles. Some of the campaign games have interesting features. CGIII, for example, makes players decide at what point to rotate their formations, exhausted from the fighting, with other formations. This takes time, during which they cannot attack, and makes them more vulnerable to an enemy attack, but will nevertheless be necessary, as it gives players access to new Reinforcement Group Tables–if they don’t rotate, they will run out of troops to buy. This is a really nice rule. The campaign games also include rules for artillery interdiction and counter-battery fire, to represent the inability of normal ASL OBA rules to represent fire blanketing areas that the firing player does not have observation to. This has always been one of the historical inaccuracies of ASL OBA, but is particularly important to deal with in Inor, given the large woods areas. Players can purchase Artillery Interdiction reinforcement groups, which can have damaging effects on enemy reinforcements (causing them casualties as they move up to the line). You can think of it as a more sophisticated version of the depleted reinforcements of Red Barricades. Players can also purchase Counter-Battery RGs, which can reduce their opponents’ OBA and Interdiction attempts. This is not as great a rule. It’s not that it is complicated or ahistorical or does any harm, but (as with the original ASL OBA rules) counter-battery attempts can generally be abstracted into what OBA players are or are not given, so there’s no real need for specific counter-batttery rules. It does provide some flavor and decision-making, though.
Overall, the campaign games certainly look promising.
Inor also comes with 16 scenarios, which are likely to get played more than the campaign games. Not all of the scenarios take place on the historical map. Five of them are geoboard scenarios representing nearby actions. This would have been a little disappointing, had there not been so many other historical map scenarios. As it is, there are enough historical map scenarios that the geoboard scenarios seem more like extras, rather than taking anything away from the historical map actions. The scenarios are evenly balanced in size, with 6 small actions, 4 medium-sized ones, and 6 large actions. No scenarios use Air Support rules, but two scenarios use Night rules. Inor is pretty OBA-heavy; 7 of the scenarios employ OBA. Only 4 scenarios have any AFVs; most of the scenarios are infantry actions. One scenario, though, INOR3 (Roucad’s Blow), is a small all-armor action.
To play all the geobard scenarios, players need boards 39, 58, 66, 70, 72, 81, 1a, and 11a, as well as ASLSK board x.
The main drawback with the historical map scenarios is that almost all such scenarios take place on a small or very small map area. Though the scenarios are set on a variety of different map areas, allowing players to “explore” the map through play, but there are very few scenarios that allow players to duke it out across a larger map area, which is something that a lot of ASLers like to be able to do without having to embark on a more time-consuming campaign game. However, INOR7 (Sauerei Wald) does use about 3/4 of the northern map, which is quite a substantial area. INOR5 (Bois de la Hache) uses a smaller but still significant part of the northern map as well. These are also two of the larger scenarios in the module. As of this writing, three years after release, reports on the ROAR website only suggest balance problems with one of the scenarios, which is always encouraging. One of the most popular (and balanced) scenarios is the tourney-sized INOR6 (First Counterattack), taking place on a tiny slice of land on the southwestern corner of the map. It features a French attack with 11.5 French squads against a German position in Inor with 5.5 squads and an AT gun. All-infantry and with only 4.5 turns, it’s going to be a quick and furious action.
Finally, Inor comes with an 80-page staple-bound “Historical Background” booklet. That’s a very long booklet that had to add substantially to the cost of this product. Veteran readers of this website will know that Desperation Morale is not fond of including substantial historical materials in ASL products, preferring that ASLers get their history from books written by historians. However, the English-language literature on World War II has a serious deficit in works on the French in the war, and Inor moreover is a pretty obscure battle, ignored in favor of the infamous armored breakthrough to the north. So it’s a little bit easier to justify at least some historical material accompanying this product. Some of the articles are particularly geared to the module, such as a “battlefield tour” in which a group of ASLers tramped across the conflict area, taking photos of historical locations (and comparing them to their map renditions). There’s also a general overview of the battle, with very useful maps (taken from the same source as the map above). But there are also articles of less direct relevance to the battle, such as a general article on French vs. German infantry tactics during the 1940 campaign. One has to wonder if a shorter historical booklet would have helped keep costs down (always elevated because of the cost of trans-Atlantic shipping) while still helping players ground themselves in the history of the conflict they are gaming.
In any case, Le Franc Tireur did not stint on any of the components, which are generally of high quality. And, by including three campaign games and 16 scenarios, LFT also provided a lot of play value for purchasers. This product also allows players to get into a France 1940 historical module other than Dinant (included in 2nd Edition Croix De Guerre), with its complicated river-crossing angle. The fighting here is a lot simpler–and there’s more of it. Moreover, the woods-fighting angle is something that ASLers can really explore.
All in all, The Green Hell of Inor seems like a very solid ASL product, one that most ASLers would want on their shelves.
Soon to come, the “Inor players guide”.